In a potentially serious setback to the international space station program, Russia proposed Friday a redesign that would use its existing Mir spacecraft as the initial building block. The use of Mir would represent a major departure from existing plans to build the station from scratch. Such a change could be politically lethal, given the commitments made by the Clinton administration to Congress that the station design would not be changed.

Two astronauts ventured out on another spacewalk Wednesday and attached antennas to the international space station under construction nearly 250 miles above Earth. In a tense and meticulously planned operation, they also pried open a stuck antenna on Zarya, the Russian-built side of the space station. All it took was several pokes with a 10-foot pole and the 4-foot strip antenna shot out. "There it goes! It's gone!" spacewalker Jerry Ross shouted. "You got it deployed.

With votes to spare, the House decided Monday for the second time in a week to continue building a scaled-back version of Space Station Freedom. After two hours of debate, lawmakers voted, 220 to 196, to reject an amendment that would have cut the heart out of President Clinton's plan to build a $25-billion orbiting space laboratory. Only last Wednesday, the program survived an earlier attempt on its life by a single vote. "That was a very strong vote," said Thomas E.

Does spending for a space station make sense in a time of budget deficits? Yes it does, but that's not a fashionable opinion these days. Skepticism toward big science is suddenly rampant. In a week that saw the space station win authorization by only a single vote in the House of Representatives, the superconducting super collider project was voted down by a wide margin.

The 40-ton Salyut-7 Soviet space station plunged through Earth's atmosphere over Argentina at 17,000 m.p.h. Wednesday night and broke apart, according to the U.S. Space Command. Debris was expected to hit land, but not any cities or heavily populated areas, officials said. "We have indications that Salyut entered the Earth's atmosphere traveling over central Argentina at 44 minutes after the hour (7:44 p.m. PST) at about 17,000 m.p.h.," said Navy Cmdr. Charles Connor, a space command spokesman.

A report from Congress's nonpartisan General Accounting Office released Tuesday projects that the nation's space station program will cost $93.9 billion over 17 years, a figure that backers disputed, fearing it could cripple bipartisan support for the endeavor. The number was immediately discounted by backers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration project, which supports about 1,000 jobs in Orange County. But Rep. Richard Zimmer (R-N.J.

After years of near-death experiences in federal budget battles, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's space station won a promise of survival Wednesday when a House subcommittee authorized all funds needed to complete the station by 2002. The bill to authorize $13.

Space shuttle Discovery and its crack construction crew pulled away from the international space station on Friday, leaving it shipshape for the arrival of its first full-time residents in less than two weeks. The shuttle undocked from the station as the two spacecraft soared 240 miles above Brazil. "Thanks for your tremendous efforts this week," Mission Control told Discovery's seven astronauts. "You did a spectacular job assembling all the new pieces of the station."

A Soviet spaceship linked up Wednesday with the orbiting Mir station, bringing to five the number of cosmonauts aboard the world's first permanent space laboratory. Three new cosmonauts arrived, paving the way for the departure in a week of Yuri Romanenko, who has spent a record 321 days in space, and his colleague, Alexander Alexandrov, who has been with him aboard Mir since July. Romanenko, who was shot into orbit last Feb.

Building a $30-billion space station could lead to the development of several key technologies, NASA's new interim director said Friday. Aaron Cohen, who was appointed to the space agency post last week, said the launching of the controversial Space Station Freedom later this decade could generate new industries in biotechnology, semiconductor manufacturing and nuclear energy.